Dated of May 29, 2015. See also Russian translation.
petrov accusation act
In 2007, Spanish Special Anticorruption Prosecutor’s office started to investigate the activity of Russian members of Tambov-Malyshev (Tambovsko-Malyshevskaya, Tambovskaya) gang settled in Spain since 1998. Three main suspects, Gennady Petrov, Alexander Malyshev and Sergey Kuzmin, were targeted. Sergey Kuzmin escaped the arrest in Spain, while Petrov and Malyshev initially served in prison for about 1,5 years and were allowed to go back to Spain – under the condition to show up in court. As such, the “Troika” (three people literally – Malyshev, Petrov and Kuzmin) is described in the accusation of 1994 in Sant-Petersburg against the Tambov-Malyshev gang of creating organized crime community , extortion, gathering slush funds and their laundering in Europe. Foot soldiers of the gang were detained with guns and cash, including a policeman Ob’edkov who is said to use work’s gun during raid attacks.
The present Spanish accusation act, submitted by prosecutors to court in 2015, attributes financial operations for total of about 50 million euros, between Liberia, Panama, Lichtenstein, Cyprus, Switzerland, Spain, Russia and others, to money laundering operations carried out in 1998-2007 by subordinates of Petrov, under pretexts of fictitious loans, consulting services and others.
Petrov failed to show up at court (as well as Malyshev or Kuzmin). The accusation was maintained against 18 defendants and then withdrawn against Vadim Romanyuk and maintained against 17 defendants by the prosecutors.
While the sentence, issued in 2018, recognized the suspicious transactions as “anti economic”, the difficulty was to prove the predicate offence when Russian authorities gave contradictory reports to Spain on the Tambov / gang, amid suspicion of strong ties of the main defendants with the Russian law enforcers and government. In 2009, Russian Prosecutor’s office sent a response to Spain on Tambov gang. But the defendant State Duma member Vladislav Reznik submitted FSB reports on Petrov . The FSB reports state that Petrov is not known to be subjected to any investigation in Russia or to be head of a gang (p. 66, p 67 of the sentence).
In 2018, the Spanish court Audiencia nacional trusted Sankt-Petersburg’s court aquittal of 1995 and the more recent FSB reports, including of its Sankt-Petersburg branch, presented by the defence. The Spanish court goes to assert that “Malyshevskaya gang” exists but Malyshev does not belong to it. In 1995, a victim of Malyshev Mr. Belikov said in court in Sankt-Petersburg that he mixed up Malyshev and Petrov with somebody else, points out Audiencia Nacional in 2018 aquittal. Petrov was acquitted in Sankt-Petersburg (Petrov’s former partner said, Petrov asked for everybody to contribute for a bribe back then). Malyshev was convicted for criminal possession of a weapon.
The Spanish sentence pretends that Petrov was not involved in organized crime, based on two reports from the Russian FSB and several more letters from different Russian law enforcement bodies, as well as on the conviction for defamation of a Russian media outlet for linking Gennady Petrov and Ilya Traber to organized crime (for background, see freedom of press in Russia . See on TBCA: evidence from monegasque police of Traber’s membership in Tambovskaya gang over Monaco and Liechtenstein’s oil trading operations. Traber failed to show up in court.
See also for background: Intercepted calls expose ties between the Tambovskaya gang, head of FSB’s Economic Security Service, and the Prosecutor of St. Petersburg.
In the sentence, the defendant, Vladislav Reznik, is recognized as a former member of the managing board of Bank Rossiya. Gennady Petrov (the main defendant who escaped from Spain to Russia) is described as co-founder and 27% shareholder of Bank Rossiya until 2003, which ought to prove the legality of his activities and his high standard of living.
The Russian-Swedish company, Petrodin (one of St. Petersburg’s municipal casino operators in the 1990s, no inactive), is also mentioned by Spanish judges as a legal entity of Petrov, explaining his wealth.
In the office of PETRODIN Joint-Venture a box with cash in plastic bag is found (1993), see search protocol of Petrodin, 1993. See also Petrodin’s casino stand , established officially for “market research”. From TBCA on Petrodin: see Petrov’s Swedish partner’s letter, 1994.